Amy Inspired

by Bethany Pierce

  “She’s beautiful,” I said. In the moment it felt like a novel thing to say.

  Selfishly, we stayed an hour, a good forty minutes after Valerie lost interest in our company.

  When we got in the car I started crying.

  “Why are you crying?” Everett said. “She’s fine—the baby’s fine. Everybody’s fine.”

  “I think I want one,” I said.

  “Oh, honey.”

  This was my second breakdown of the week and I didn’t even care this time. I had lost all dignity. Everett drove directly to the Donut Shoppe where we ate bear claws and coffee for dinner. He tried to cheer me up with gossip about Eli.

  “So that was some drama, the other night.”

  I’d managed to stop crying. I wiped my nose on a napkin and asked what he was talking about.

  “Eli and Jillian. They were arguing on the porch at your party. Well, he was on the porch, on the phone arguing with her. I don’t know what she had her panties in a twist about, but things look bad for our hero.”

  “You could hear them fighting?”

  “I heard his end, which was more than enough. Trust me, barbs were thrown, rejoinders met with sarcasm.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’m a writer. I know dialogue.”

  “You write criticism.”

  “Then I know character development. Whatever.” He lifted his coffee as if to make a toast. “It’s curtains for Jillian.”

  It was too hot for March. We suffered a weekend of rain that only amplified the humidity. When the sun returned Monday, it seemed an earnest, unwanted newcomer at an already out of control party. It shone eerily over the wind that throttled the windowpanes and whipped the trees into a frenzy. Girls walked sideways. Dead leaves, blackened from months under snow, stirred and spun in mini-twisters. On the field, the men’s soccer team kicked the ball toward the goal only to wait in suspense as it lingered in the air eight, nine, ten seconds before falling back to the earth and directly at the opponent’s feet.

  At the office, I closed the blinds and shut the door. I was too busy working to notice the increasing violence of the wind. When I checked my e-mail several hours later I found four campus security messages waiting in my inbox.

  To: gallagham@copenhagen.edu

  From: campussecurity@copenhagen.edu

  Sent: Monday 3.12.07 10:37 AM

  Subject: Wind Advisory

  Students and faculty:

  A severe wind advisory is in effect for Copenhagen University from 3:30 PM to 8:14 PM. Winds have been clocked in at 40 MPH with corresponding gales at nearly 60 MPH.

  There have been power outages on South Campus. If you are without power, you may stay in the Student Commons for the night. Bring a sleeping bag and pillow. The Student Commons and Laws Dining Hall will be open for meals. Campus security requires that all individuals not moving to the student commons REMAIN INDOORS until further notice.

  ~Campus Security

  Similar messages had been sent at 11:21 a.m., 12:15 p.m., and 3:12 p.m. Each insisted that students and faculty remain indoors so, like the students, I went outside to see what was going on.

  The sky had yellowed. Somewhere wood splintered, the spine of a sapling snapping in two. The clouds moved quickly, each a part of a larger tapestry pulled quickly on a reel. In the parking lot, a group of boys took turns sitting in wheeled office chairs, using dormitory bedsheets as parachutes to rocket themselves back and forth across the lot. I drove home at a crawl, mindful of falling debris and blacked-out intersections.

  Eli forced the door open for me with both hands.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I shook leaves from my coat. “The traffic lights are out.”

  He took my bag and ran up the stairs ahead of me. “Everything’s out. We had to close The Brewery—Kevin says the whole downtown has shut down.” He returned from Zoë’s bedroom cradling the flame of a cinnamon candle. “Do you have any more of these? It’ll be pitch-black in half an hour.”

  We found one flashlight, three jar candles, and twelve tea lights I’d kept stashed away in the closet with the Christmas decorations. We lit them all. The many flickering lights cast the living room in soft shadow.

  I shone the flashlight into the almost empty kitchen cupboards, wishing I hadn’t skipped lunch to work. “I’m assuming all the restaurants are closed.”

  “We have hot dogs,” Eli said optimistically.

  We cut the hog dogs into half-inch slices and laid them on white bread, smothered in mustard and ketchup. We ate at the table facing the open screen door so we could enjoy the show. Heat lightning had begun. The cold hot dogs tasted good. They reminded me of home, of Friday nights with my brother playing Monopoly. We’d eat box macaroni and rubbery, cold hot dogs dipped in ketchup packets snatched from McDonald’s.We loved hot dog night and were oblivious to the guilt our mother felt serving us dinner on paper towels, how she’d stood in the grocery aisle an hour before doing math, thinking of the electric bill and the rent.

  After dinner, Eli and I worked together at the dining room table, sharing the glow of the single flashlight. Eli was finishing a drawing he wanted to eventually commit to lithograph. I wrote in an old notebook, something I hadn’t done since before graduate school when I’d had time to leisurely draft the edges of a story on paper, take my time working toward a cohesive center.

  “Do you always write in such pretty rows?” he asked.

  “Do you always draw in such ugly lines?” I asked back. I watched his hand skittishly jump here and there on the page. “What’s it like in your head when you’re drawing? I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to be able to draw.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. I just make something and keep making it until a pattern or a figure or something emerges. And it becomes pleasing to me.”

  “You love it, don’t you?”

  “I don’t work when it’s not enjoyable.”

  This struck me as somehow profound. “Can you call it work then?”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

  I said, “I doubt there are very many things I hate more than writing.” “Then why do you do it?”

  I chewed on the end of my pen. “For that one moment of inspiration,” I decided.

  He stopped drawing, leaned his chair back on two legs in that way that so exasperates junior high teachers. “So it’s one moment for you—the light bulb going off over the head?”

  I considered the image. “More like a million light bulbs going off at the same time. Like paparazzi. Then nothing—silence for weeks. It only ever comes in bursts for me. The rest is pure drudgery.”

  “Sounds daunting.”

  I gathered my courage and asked what I’d been meaning to ask for days. “You never said what you thought of my stories.”

  He let the chair fall back on all fours. “I liked them.”

  “We’re not allowed to say ‘like’ in our critiques.”

  He continued drawing. “Can I say I really liked them?”

  “Much worse. Really is an empty modifier.”

  I imitated his expression, eyebrows raised in theatrical alarm.

  He worked silently, feverishly, at the corner of his notebook for a full five minutes without speaking. When he’d finished he showed me the drawing: cartoon me being pulled into the sky by a dozen light bulbs like helium balloons. Cartoon me looking desperately down at the ground as if unsure the sky is where she wants to be.

  “Your characters seemed real to me,” he said finally, setting the sketchbook back on the table. “Can I say real ? Is real an emptying or whatever modifier?”

  I laughed. “You can say real.”

  I pulled my hair into a loose knot at the top of my head. Eli watched the careful operation, and I pretended not to notice. The wind smelled of rain that never came, but when the trees gave up their first spring growth and the baby green buds shot like pellets across the yard, the sound was like sleet on
the rooftop.

  A complete happiness came over me like the heat of a blush to the cheeks. I had a vision of the two of us together always, sharing the little apartment. I would write and Eli would cut and paste and paint, while the rain pattered and the night closed us in. This would be a quiet contentment so wonderful I wouldn’t need anything else. I didn’t even need him to touch me—not anymore than this brush of the hands. Our affection would be pure, platonic, simple. I just wanted to wake up and spend every day near him.

  The light of the flashlight faded until our eyes were heavy with the darkness and strain. We took turns in the bathroom. Just like any night, he spread a sheet on the futon. He said good-night.

  It was nearly one in the morning. In bed I lay wide-eyed, an energy in my chest and belly humming.

  Eli came to my room.

  “Was just wondering if you were asleep.”

  I sat up. “I can’t.”

  He came and sat on the bed, his face close to mine. Shadows pooled beneath his brow and his cheekbones until his face was almost like a stranger’s.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I can’t sleep either.”

  We were whispering. I moved over. He crawled into the bed beside me. He put his arm under my head and I pressed my face into his neck. I breathed in his smell.

  He kissed me on the forehead; his lips lingered at my brow. Then he pressed his mouth on mine. He wrapped his arms around my waist as he said my name. The wall beams creaked, and I felt a fleeting sensation of falling, a dizziness, as if the room itself rocked in the wind.

  14

  I woke up to the sight of Eli’s abandoned pillow, to the sound of the shower running. It was nearly ten already and the sunshine hot in the room. Eli had left a note on the alarm clock. Classes had been canceled due to power outages.

  I closed my eyes, wishing I could return to sleep, indulging for a few moments in memories of the night before. But the guilt had already planted itself, a sickening nausea that forced me out of bed. I imagined explaining myself to Zoë.To say something happened or nothing happened depended entirely on a person’s sense of sexual morality: We had only slept holding each other. We hadn’t been thinking; it had only been once; he was miserable with Jillian— anyone could see that. I didn’t know why Zoë was the one I felt I owed the apology.

  I checked my reflection in the microwave. I ran my fingers through my hair and splashed water on my face from the kitchen sink.

  “You’re up,” Eli said. He walked over to me, hesitated slightly, then kissed my cheek. It was a rough, dry kiss, heavy with selfconscious effort. He’d been in the bathroom forty-five minutes. A shower never took him more than five. “Kevin called. The downtown area has power. He and Diedre are getting together for brunch and wanted to know if we’d meet them.”

  “I’ll get dressed,” I said, angry that I hadn’t already.

  We walked with a good foot of sidewalk between us. I hoped he would reach for my hand, a public gesture to redeem what I already knew had been a mistake, but he couldn’t even bring himself to meet my eyes. We mourned the damaged trees and said nothing of what had or hadn’t happened between us.

  Thankfully, Kevin and Diedre were already at the restaurant when we arrived. Kevin smiled, offered me a croissant, and asked how we’d enjoyed the storm. I blushed severely.

  Eli went to work straight from brunch. I was relieved to see him go.

  I knew I’d lost him for good even before he told me he was moving out. It had been a stupid mistake, a thing that happened when good friends who liked each other well enough got a little lonely, got a little too close. I said these things to him after he’d announced he was leaving. As with Adam, I regretted that I hadn’t been the one to initiate the inevitable. Two days of careful politeness and outright misery; I should have kicked him out.

  He knelt on the living room floor to pack his clothes. I remembered the first day we met, how thoughtlessly he’d tossed them onto the driveway. Now he took his time, wrapping his shirts into little cocoons he then tucked into his duffel bag in rows.

  “Zoë can’t be gone for long,” he said.

  “No, I’m sure she’ll be back by the end of the week.”

  “You’ll call me if things get bad with her mom.”

  “You’ll still be working with her,” I pointed out.

  I showed him to the door, promising I would be back from class by four to help him move his desk and artwork. Back upstairs I leaned on the kitchen counter, dreading the day. I cringed as the Volkswagen revved to life.

  Classes were terrible. I left my notes at the office and had to struggle blindly through my lessons. By the last class I gave up and made the students write in their journals. They lost interest quickly and whispered to one another, drew pictures in their notebooks. One fell asleep, but I didn’t have the energy to make a spectacle of him. I stared out the window and remembered the peculiar, pained expression that had flashed across Eli’s face when I told him he hadn’t hurt me, if that was what he was worried about. It was a revelation to me that I could lie so effortlessly; I had almost succeeded in deceiving myself.

  I dismissed the students early and rushed home, but his things were already gone. I searched the apartment up and down for a note or an explanation. An apology. He’d left without so much as a drawing.

  It took three days of phone calls to get ahold of my mother. After months of nonstop phone calls, my mother had abruptly stopped harassing me. We had only spoken briefly about the fight with Zoë (she was on my side, naturally) and the return of Fay’s cancer (it was in God’s hands, of course). I had been the one to hang up, impatient with her easy answers. Now I regretted being so rude. I was frustrated with myself, worried about Zoë, distraught about Eli. I needed to talk to her.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked. “You sound terrible.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “But what about you? How are you? I haven’t heard from you.”

  “I know, I know, I’m so sorry—I have been meaning to call, but things are so busy here. I’ve been working every day of the week, and I’ve got two new salesladies to train. Things are piling up like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “You could have at least e-mailed me.”

  “Oh, honey, I really am sorry. You sound bothered. Are you sure you’re doing all right?”

  I updated her on school and tedious Copenhagen news. I had hoped to circle conversation toward Eli eventually, but Mom was only half listening, her eyes on the kitchen television or a newspaper. I changed the subject to one I knew she could carry. “How’s the wedding planning coming?”

  “Oh, it’s madness. We’ve been trying to decide on a restaurant for the rehearsal dinner, but you know Brian and Marie—so indecisive. It takes me hours to get them to say what they really want. I keep telling them we have the money now, so we can do things nice, but Brian says he wants to have it at the Roadhouse Steak Pit. Honestly.”

  As she continued to talk, I realized that this “we” she spoke of referred to her and Richard. It soon became apparent that he had offered Mom money for the rehearsal dinner and the various components of the wedding she had wedged herself into organizing.

  “Are you sure you want him to help?” I asked.

  “If I’m going to be indebted, it might as well be to someone I know.”

  “That actually sounds like the worse kind of debt to be in.”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she replied. “Richard and I are going away.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, he has these frequent flyer miles adding up, and he’s practically won himself a free trip to Napa Valley. We’re going next week—it’s completely last minute. The house is an utter disaster. I have clothes all over the living room and in the kitchen, and I’ve been trying to get my mail forwarded to Grandma, but I don’t know if they’ll only do that for just seven days. Do they do that for seven days? I think they do.”

  “Seven days is a long time,” I said.

/>   “I know, I’ve never been on a vacation for more than three, and your father always insisted on going to old historical sites. He liked to see those cemeteries and war statues—Civil War this and that. I’m beginning to think I didn’t know myself then. I don’t know why a body in their right mind would want to walk around a lot of dead people and call it a vacation. If I’m going on vacation I’m going to enjoy myself. I know those men died for us, and don’t get me wrong, I am grateful and all, but if it’s my vacation I don’t want to be moping around thinking of a lot of men dying on some field for the slaves.”

  “Where will you be staying?”

  “The Meridian,” she answered. “They have a pool and a downstairs restaurant, where we can get free breakfast and pool towels. And they have AA discounts.”

  “What, rewards for alcoholics?”

  She missed the sarcasm entirely.

  “Richard only drinks red wine, Amy. It’s good for his heart.”

  Since Mom had started seeing Richard, I’d maintained a tedious picture of their weekend courtship. Saturday would be spent at Sam’s Club, buying bulk birdseed and making lunch of the sample stations. When he accompanied her to church, they would linger at the Sunday school donut table, nursing weak coffee and discussing the contemporary relevance of Habakkuk.

  I had only just reconciled myself to the fact that my mother had a steady boyfriend while I didn’t; it was a testament to my selfishness that I’d never considered the possibility she and Richard might actually fall in love.

  There was one benefit to living by myself again. Free from the tyranny of Zoë’s moods and from the constant awareness of Eli’s presence, I finally began to write.

  The first story I finished was about a twenty-something sculptor who returns from her honeymoon to a one-bedroom apartment in the backwoods of Kentucky. This new life is four hours from her friends and studio in the city where they met. Her husband’s work mystifies her. While he’s explained what he does many times, she can never understand it, so she tells people he is in business management.